Last week, Twitter restricted the availability of a documentary called What is a Woman?
Once Musk had watched the film, he shared it himself tweeting, ‘Every parent should watch this’ and joking that, ‘The Streisand Effect on this will set an all-time record!’ He was right. In less than a week, more than 170 million people have watched the film. Yet mainstream critics have refused to review it calling the director a ‘transphobic bigot’ and telling the publicist that she should be ‘ashamed to be associated with him’.
All this might be just another skirmish in the looking-glass land of 21st-century culture wars but the question ‘What is hateful conduct?’ just got a little more pointed, at least in Queensland, which is poised to criminalise hate speech. And it’s not messing around. Vilification based on racial, religious, sexual, or gender identity will be punishable by up to three years in prison.
That’s a dramatic increase. At present, offenders face a maximum fine of 70 penalty units or six months in jail, but that’s not enough it seems. According to the explanatory notes provided with the Bill, the increased sentence reflects ‘the seriousness of this type of offending and the community’s denunciation of such conduct’.
It will also be a lot easier to charge someone with a hate-speech crime. Under the current civil law, a written complaint must be sent to the anti-discrimination commissioner within a year. By law, the commissioner must reject complaints that are frivolous, trivial, vexatious, misconceived, or lacking in substance. If the complaint is not dismissed, it may be dealt with through conciliation. For the police to commence a prosecution, they must first seek the written consent of the attorney-general or director of public prosecutions.
The new legislation gives police the power to lay charges without consulting anyone if they believe someone has committed a crime using ‘any form of communication to the public including by speaking, writing, printing, displaying notices… or by electronic means’, which would cover social media posts.
It’s all bad enough as it is. People are already too frightened to speak out about women’s rights or trans issues for fear of losing their jobs or their reputations.
It would be even worse if what was at stake was the loss of your liberty and a criminal record.
This wouldn’t just have a chilling effect on free speech, it would put it in a deep freezer that all the sunshine in Queensland couldn’t thaw.
Source: Twitter, trans and videotape | The Spectator Australia